1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a diagnosis assisting apparatus and a method for assisting diagnosis.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, people having developmental disorder has been said to be increased. It has been found that the symptom of the developmental disorder is reduced by finding the symptom early and starting rehabilitation and this increases the effect to adapt to the society. In Japan, it is desired to find the developmental disorder in an early stage by an interview at the time of medical checkup for half-past-one-year-old children. However, the effect is not enough because there is a problem such as shortage of psychiatrists and to take a long time for the interview. There is a need for an objective and efficient diagnosis assisting apparatus of the developmental disorder.
To find the developmental disorder in an early stage, for example, the diagnosis at the time of the medical checkup for half-past-one-year-old children is ideal. Also, it is necessary to consider the use at the time of the medical checkup. A behavior that the child does not look at eyes of a person facing the child (turn his/her eyes away) can be considered as characteristics of the developmental disorder child. There is a method for detecting the point of regard by photographing a face of a human by using a camera and calculating a corneal reflex and a pupil position. A method for assisting the diagnosis of the developmental disorder by applying the above method has been proposed.
In Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2005-185431, a method has been provided in which an eye region and a mouth region surely including a mouth of a subject to be observed are specified and the number of the frames is calculated. However, a detection method with higher accuracy has been required. The number of the frames includes the number of frames of the moving image in which the point of regard coordinate is detected in the eye region, the number of the frames of the moving image in which the point of regard coordinate is detected in the mouth region, the number of the frames of the moving image in which the point of regard coordinate is detected in a region other than the eye region, and the number of all the frames to be calculated.
Therefore, there is a need for a diagnosis assisting apparatus and a method for assisting the diagnosis which can improve diagnosis accuracy.